[SENATE] 1910 Amnesty Bill
Posted: 21:24:58 Wednesday, 01 November, 2017
I know there are other pressing matters at hand. But there are over four hundred Senators and Deputies, and three hundred sixty five days in a year. We have time to provide justice.
1910 Amnesty Bill
Whereas all participants of the so-called "Revolt of the Lash" in November 1910 were granted, via decision of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, signed by the President, a complete and full amnesty for the crime of mutiny, in return for returning custody of their ships to the State and surrendering peacefully,
Whereas the Government of that time used a subsequent and entirely unconnected minor December 1910 revolt — in which many of the amnestied participants of the "Revolt of the Lash" fought valiantly against the rebels — as an excuse to declare a state of emergency, unlawfully override the Congress-declared and Presidentially sanctioned amnesty and, in going against it, imprison said amnestied sailors,
Whereas during their unlawful imprisonment, over a dozen sailors died from exposure to poisonous quicklime within their isolation cell, at least nine were given summary and illegal executions, many suffered torture, and unknown hundreds were sent north to the Amazon as penal rubber labourers, where untold numbers died from tropical diseases, and others yet unrightfully placed in mental institutions,
Whereas ten principal leaders of the "Revolt of the Leash", who like their fellow mutineers had been given amnesties, only to face illegal imprisonment, were subsequently found not guilty of participation in the December 1910 revolt by a court of law after eighteeen months in prison, and despite this were discharged from the navy,
- Section 1. All of those sailors unlawfully punished despite their legal amnesty, known to be a minimum of 1,292 men, not counting some of those hundreds others excluded from this officially registered number which were shipped north as penal rubber labourers in the Amazon, those killed by the military police after their arrest, and those leaders who went on trial and were found innocent of participation in the December 1910 revolt, shall receive full rehabilitation, posthumously or otherwise. This includes a restoration of their legal and democratic rights as citizens, their right to take service in the Merchant Marine, and their military pensions.
- Section 2. This bill shall go into effect immediately after passage.